Constance

by Patrick Mcgrath

  —What can I do? I said.

  He pondered this. He was silent for a time.

  —She won’t see a shrink?

  —No.

  —Get her to talk about it. Don’t let it fester. But Christ, Sidney! One man under a train is bad enough—

  —Tell me about it.

  A group of teenagers on the grass nearby was singing folk songs and strumming guitars.

  —How are you holding up? he said.

  I shook my head.

  —So, Ed, make her talk about it, that’s your advice?

  —She keeps acting out. That thing with the guy in the bar. Then smashing all the plates.

  —Not all the plates—

  —She represses it, Sidney, it only gets worse.

  We sat there nodding in the sunshine. Like a crippled sparrow, a song of peace and love struggled past us in the warm summer air. That’s as far as we got, Ed and I, that time: talk good, repression bad. When I arrived home I found Constance at the kitchen table reading a novel and eating sardines from the tin.

  —Why aren’t you at work? I said.

  —I quit.

  I didn’t believe her. She’d been showing up at Cooper Wilder only sporadically and I knew Ellen Taussig was concerned about her, more than concerned, disappointed. Let down. She didn’t jump. She was pushed.

  The heat wave lay on the city like an incubus made of steam. I looked the word up: a male demon who has sexual intercourse with women in their sleep. If this was how the English mama conceived Constance it would explain a lot. And now she’d quit her job. I asked her why.

  —Time to move on.

  No commitment. I told her she’d laid the foundations of a good career at Cooper Wilder. But no. No loyalty. No tenacity. She’d have abandoned our marriage if I’d let her. Daddy had at least provided some kind of focus for her flailing emotions. As an institution, the family provides structure for women like Constance. But our own small unit couldn’t give her what she needed.

  I took on Daddy’s role as best I could. I tried to be the source of order in her life. I knew she wouldn’t leave me, not while we had Howard, for our one source of stillness and peace, our one opportunity to be not unhappy, lay with my son. And her chess game was improving. They played every evening now. It gave me respite from my anxiety. It gave me a micron of hope. I thought that if she could only extend to me the simple trust and affection she felt for my son then we could climb up out of this dark place. I would ask her no more questions about the past. It was time to look forward.

  Thinking this, I left my study. They were in the sitting room, at the table, silently staring at the chessboard. I saw total engagement, utter concentration, and I was encouraged. We’ll get through this, I thought. I collapsed onto the couch and pressed my fingers hard against my temples. I’d been troubled by headaches lately. My nights were disturbed. I got no sleep in the spare room. There hadn’t been any sex since she smashed the crockery and I missed it. I heard a small clicking sound, one chess piece making contact with another as it was removed from the board.

  —Check.

  It was said so quietly I didn’t even know whose voice it was. The city was peaceful. Late sunlight drifted in through the bay window overlooking the street, motes of dust dancing in it like germs. It was still very hot. Gladys had brought flowers that morning, I smelled them now, what were they, tulips, lilies? In a moment I would get up off this chesterfield and identify the flowers and then quietly pour myself a drink. I began to float away. Click. Check. A man is running toward a locomotive—

  I awoke with a start. Constance and Howard were standing over me where I lay sprawled on the couch with saliva running down my chin. I struggled up, wiping my face with a handkerchief.

  —What happened?

  —Constance won, said Howard.

  —You were shouting, she said.

  —I had a nightmare.

  A few mornings later Constance took a call from upstate. I heard her cry out. I came out of my study. She was in the sitting room, by the window. I saw her slam the telephone down, then she swept the chess pieces off the board so they clattered all over the hardwood floor.

  —What the hell—? I said.

  She turned toward me. Her face was twisted with fury. I barely recognized her.

  —The house!

  —What about the house?

  —He left it to Mildred!

  —No.

  It was Morgan’s will, of course. That was his lawyer calling.

  —Yes!

  He’d left it all to Mildred, the land, the house, the truck, the boat: everything. I was astonished. But Constance was more than astonished. She was speechless with outrage. I spent an hour with her. At first I failed to grasp the real import of this distressing news, I mean the fact that she didn’t care about the property, that wasn’t it at all. No, what she’d wanted was to tear Ravenswood down. She’d been looking forward to it. She’d relished the prospect. But now—

  —She’s haunting the place, Sidney, she’s keeping it alive with his memory. I can’t bear it. I wanted to watch it come down. I’d have set fire to it myself if they’d let me. But with that old ghost there’ll be no peace for any of us.

  Listening to this I suddenly saw not Mildred but Constance as the old ghost. The bitterness was eating away at not just her mind but her face, her body, her chattering lips, the very fiber of her soul. Soon it would all be gone. I saw the day coming.

  Her mood grew darker. Her morbid vitality was turned inward now. This news from upstate took us both by surprise. I tried to tell her that it made no difference but I saw how far I’d get with that. It was an insult from beyond the grave, one further reason that her hatred of Daddy would never die. She hadn’t told me how warmly she’d anticipated the destruction of Ravenswood.

  —Every plank and floorboard, Sidney. Every slate, every stone, every nail—

  She was obsessed with this one idea. She knew better than to pursue it with me, however, because I didn’t share her obsession. I found it extraordinary that the old man’s death hadn’t been enough for her, and that she had to see his house destroyed as well. I realized it would never end. The pathology was rooted so deep in her psyche, the condition was chronic. Unless she sought treatment it would only grow worse.

  I was desperately tired. Then one afternoon I heard her in the kitchen telling Howard that Ravenswood was really her house and that one day she’d get it back. I heard him asking her if she was going to live there. This would worry him, of course. He smelled separation and he didn’t like it. I knew what was about to happen, she was about to tell him that no, she didn’t want to live in it, she wanted to burn it to the ground. He wouldn’t understand, of course, and I didn’t want him trying to understand. I stood in the doorway.

  —That’s enough, I said quietly.

  Howard was sitting at the end of the table, Constance was leaning in close to him, her hands clasped, a cigarette burning in the ashtray beside her. She had her back to me. Howard was frowning. He was out of his depth. He hated that feeling, and he dealt with it by asking questions. I didn’t want her telling him that Morgan murdered someone.

  —Howard, I need to speak to Constance alone, I said.

  She began to turn her head. She wasn’t pleased to be interrupted. In her face, as she peered at me over her shoulder, I saw sheer malevolence and loathing. Again I didn’t recognize her. Howard was happy to escape. I closed the kitchen door and sat down at the table.

  —It’s not fair on him, I said. He’s not old enough.

  —He’s old enough to know what was done to me.

  —No, Constance, he’s not, not yet. He’s still a child. Let him have a few more years of innocence.

  Her eyebrows flicked up as she reached for her cigarette. She planted it in the corner of her mouth. She hooded her eyelids against the smoke. For a moment she looked like Barb’s mother, old Queenie Mulcahy. But at least Queenie never lost her sense of humor. She kept it alive with gin.

/>   —He’s still innocent, you mean.

  Unspoken was the thought, Fortunate child. We should all be so lucky.

  —That’s what I do mean. Tell me something.

  —What, Sidney?

  —How do you propose to get the house back?

  She dropped her eyes. She crushed the cigarette out. I didn’t need to tell her she had no money. She didn’t even have a job. Then she looked up, straightened her back, and pushed her hands through her hair in a way I knew well. She turned her face up to the ceiling and closed her eyes. It marked a change of mood, a shift to the positive.

  —Oh, Sidney, Sidney. So practical always. So very orderly in all you do.

  She gazed at me full on, direct and intense.

  —I’ll find a way, she said.

  I nodded.

  —But I want to ask you something, she said.

  —What is it?

  —Take me up there one last time. I think it would help. And Mildred must be so lonely.

  What was going on now? I didn’t trust her. Mildred had become an object of contempt in Constance’s mind and Raven-swood was a kind of mausoleum, its sole relic the spirit of Daddy and his attendant ghost. Her only thought for weeks had been to destroy it. Why did she want to see it one last time, if not to set it ablaze?

  But I didn’t say this. I no longer had the will to go up against her. She was too strong for me. She was starting to get the better of me.

  —Sure.

  —When?

  —When the car’s fixed.

  There’d been more trouble with the Jag. Having performed reliably, more than reliably, magnificently, for many years, like everything else it was beginning to fail. Replacement parts had to be sent over from England. It would be in the garage for at least a month.

  —We can take the train.

  —Let’s talk about it later.

  But she hated to be thwarted. She had no tolerance for delay.

  —Why can’t we talk about it now, is there a reason not to talk about it now? You think I’ll forget about it if we don’t talk about it now? You think I’m a fool?

  —Please, Constance.

  She was working herself into a rage. Her eyes were glazed, her lips moving rapidly, silently.

  —Please?

  —All right. When do you want to go?

  —Saturday morning so Howard can come.

  That was the Tuesday. I had less than four days. I went back to my study and picked up the manuscript of A Scream in the Night: Hysteria and the Moral Collapse of a Great American City.

  The heat wave didn’t let up. It occurred to me that it might be good for Constance to revisit the house after all. Her fixed idea about her childhood might undergo some modification. Not every memory was a bad one. Life is more complicated, more nuanced than the obsessive mind will allow. I began to convince myself that yes, it was a good thing that she return. Ed Kaplan was with me on this.

  —You’re being smart, he said, all those good times she had with her sister, they must mean something.

  —Iris died up there.

  —I know that. It doesn’t mean there aren’t happy memories. And she loved her mother.

  Yes, she loved her mother. I allowed myself to become guardedly optimistic. But life remained intensely uncomfortable. It was still hard to sleep in that heat. There was a standing fan in every room in the apartment but there was never enough of a draft. It didn’t improve the mood on the street, but I tried to shut out the screaming and the sirens and entertain a vision of homecoming and reconciliation. I saw us arrive upstate on a clear day when the breezes off the mountains had cleansed the air, and the river sparkled in the sunlight as Mildred emerged from the house to greet us, not an old ghost, no, but a woman at peace with the world, and fulfilled, living in the house she’d inherited from the man she’d so loyally served. She’d found the means to make repairs, to bring in men, carpenters and painters, so the place was bright and trim to the eye, and inside all was fresh and spotless. Mildred was nothing if not a housekeeper and this, now, was her house. She would welcome us to it with modest pride.

  As I tossed and turned in the damp night heat, in the airless, claustrophobic little bedroom behind the kitchen I imagined all this, and I saw Constance embrace Mildred as Howard ran across the grass, his arms spread wide—

  There would be talk then of an extended stay, for Raven-swood was too big for one woman, and it surely needed a child’s laughter to bring it fully back to life, and Constance turned to me, radiant, saying I could have the tower for my library, and I knew then that her nightmare was over, that she’d finally come home—

  Wednesday. Every window was open. Every fan was turning. Constance sat at the kitchen table in a light bathrobe open over her underwear. Gladys didn’t come in on a Wednesday. Howard was at school. Her hair was piled untidily on top of her head. She was fanning herself with a magazine. She was looking at family photographs, the English mama in her garden, various dogs, herself, Iris. Daddy. I saw her go through the heap of photos as though it were a deck of cards. I believe she was looking, not for the first time, for a glimpse of a tall blond youth, her father. A cigarette hung from the corner of her mouth. She was frowning. Her glasses were on the end of her nose. She was wearing a lace-edged brassiere under the flimsy nightgown and it lent a nice clean definition to her small pert breasts. Her hair was damp and drops of perspiration glistened on the back of her neck. I leaned over and kissed her neck where it was sweaty and tasted salt.

  —What are you doing?

  She was slapping the photos down like a widow playing solitaire. My hands were on her shoulders now. I was starting to pant a little. I slid my hands down to her breasts.

  —Stop it, she said.

  But her attention was on the photographs.

  I pressed my lips to her neck again. I pushed the nightdress off her shoulders. She twisted her head around to look at me. I tried to kiss her mouth but she averted her face from me.

  —Stand up, I whispered.

  She sighed, then stood up and faced me. The nightgown had fallen to her elbows but it couldn’t fall further because her arms were folded.

  —Why are you making that noise? she said.

  I gently pushed her arms apart and pressed myself to her body. Surprisingly passive now, she leaned back against the table, her hands splayed on the surface behind her. A few photographs drifted to the floor. I unloosed my trousers. They fell to my ankles. My hands were pressed to the cool damp flesh of her back and my face was buried in her neck. Her hair was starting to come loose. Up came the greedy trout. I was breathing fast and shallow now and whispering her name over and over, then with a shock like lightning or electricity my fingers brushed the warm lips of her vulva—

  —I don’t know if I want to do this, she said loudly.

  —You do, I whispered.

  It made her laugh.

  —You want to do it here?

  I did. I wanted to do it here, now, right in the here and now.

  —All right, Sidney.

  She pulled her underpants aside and arranged herself canted slightly backwards against the edge of the table, with her hands on my shoulders, murmuring distractedly about the heat in the apartment, hissing at me to slow down.

  —Now you can, she said.

  After a few seconds she told me to call her Iris and I was encouraged. But she was disengaged throughout: I stared at her face while it was happening. She gazed at the ceiling with a blank expression and it was over too quickly. Only once did she produce a small gasp, and that’s what did it for me, that mere brief involuntary intake of breath, which was followed by a word, or a name, I didn’t hear it clearly, was it Daddy? It wasn’t Sidney, or darling, or love—

  —What a mess you’ve made, she remarked. And a little after that she said: Well, that was incandescent.

  I was beyond caring by then. It was sex, but it was like sex with a mannequin, apart from the gasp. Incandescent. I thought she might have destroyed the last of m
y love with that one word, I didn’t even care about the Daddy. Perhaps it was Eddie? That would be something. But I wouldn’t know the damage she’d done until later. These things either burn slowly through tissue like acid or you shake them off with a careless laugh. She left the kitchen. I stood leaning over the sink, gripping the sides and panting, as I ran the water cold. I was suddenly very thirsty.

  That was Wednesday.

  Thursday was uneventful. She was cool with me. Neither of us made reference to the incident at the kitchen table. That evening it occurred to me after Howard had gone to bed that if we tried again we might do better. I suggested it.

  —Not tonight, darling, she said.

  I think she was laughing at me. What I heard was: Not any night, darling. Not any day. Not at the kitchen table, not in bed, nowhere. Never. Her scorn and her insults hadn’t killed my love, however: the reverse. I wanted her very much, more than ever if that was possible. I remembered how I felt the night I met her, when we’d sat in an empty restaurant and she told me about her family. I’d listened to her story, all the while ravenous, hungering for her, thinking it incredible that I might have this pale distant vision of a girl with her porcelain limbs and startled eyes and her sudden throaty laughter—

  This is what we’d come to. Incandescent. And then for the first time, I don’t know why, perhaps remembering the night I met her and the promise I felt then, the anticipation, it occurred to me that I might share some responsibility for what had happened to us, was this possible? I mean that some part at least of our trouble was my doing? Briefly I glimpsed a seed or germ of an idea here, perhaps not the truth, or not the whole truth, but something. I remembered what Barb used to say about my control tendencies, my dogmatic inflexibility—

  More than once Ed Kaplan had told me I couldn’t take criticism. But that way madness lay. No, I was in the right here. Surely.

  Friday was eventful. I asked where the family photos were, the ones she’d spread all over the kitchen table, and she said she’d thrown them in the trash. I asked her what happened to the trash and she said it had already gone down. The destruction of photographs is an act of spiritual violence. Mildred Knapp burned the photographs of her husband, Walter, and deprived Constance of knowing what the man she believed to be her father looked like. Now she’d done the same. They were all dead, of course, but it was tantamount to a second death, an end to their lives in her memory. I tried to tell her this.